Twists and Turns
by SJlikeslists
Summary: An AU in which to play helps keep the can't we pretend MJ didn't happen blues at bay - or something like that (one shots and sets of one shots that will likely all be rather random).
1. Find Another Way Part 1 (Hazelle AU)

AN: Chapter Two of _WtW One Shots_ is the divergence springboard for this alternate universe. It is not at all necessary to have read it, but it might make the starting point a little clearer.

Disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games_.

They do not have any unused scrap paper in the house. This is nothing new. Why would they spend what little money they have that is not already earmarked for necessities on something like paper? There are always so many other things that are priorities that they will get around to buying one day when there is enough food in the cupboards and coal in the bin and shoes that fit everyone and Gale's pants are not too short for him again and the soap has not run out and on and on and on for the list that never seems to get any smaller. When they do have scrap paper to be used for the purpose of things like writing down lists, it comes through round about acquisition - the backs of pay stubs or the margins of the few papers that actually get sent home from the school (the brown paper that some of the merchants use to wrap parcels is the other source, but that is even rarer to have at hand). There is no unused surface left from any of those sources - she has used every last bit of it. Every piece of open space at her disposal is covered with her attempts at figuring a way out of their situation that does not involve her eldest going to the Justice Building on his birthday.

Numbers have always come easily to Hazelle. They make sense to her. They work for her. She does not know why - they just do. She has always found a sense of comfort in looking at a column of figures and being able to use it to know that if they do this, then they will be able to afford whatever they were saving for at such and such a time. Numbers have always provided her with goals to reach as well as reassurances that the little deprivations that she employs in their household are succeeding in the larger goal (which has always been no extra slips of paper when she must surrender her children to the chances of Reaping Day).

This is the first time in her life that she has ever found herself wishing that the numbers did not speak so plainly to her. She is not sure if she even means that, but there is a part of her that would like to be able to pretend that she is not seeing what it is that she is seeing. She cannot make the numbers work. The garnishment from Ty's paycheck to cover the cost of taking their two youngest to see the District doctor is going to leave them too short to keep them going. Even with their carefully scrimped savings that was meant to cover the cost of keeping their home above frigid turned to mitigating the expense, it simply will not reach far enough. They will freeze or they will starve - they may do both at the same time. The woods are not going to save them this time. Even on the best days in the best of conditions, the produce of her husband and eldest slipping into the woods on the other side of the fence will not feed them completely (let alone provide them with the other things that are needed to keep their household going). The numbers simply do not work no matter how many times she redoes them.

She cannot argue that tessara will not make the difference between them making it to next spring or not. It will. She knows that it will. The supplies that come with tessara registries hardly constitute an abundance, but they do provide a baseline that, in theory, will keep someone alive. It offers a temporary level of breathing room. It means that everything else you do is an addition to subsistence. It means supplies from the woods can be used to move them into the category of slightly hungry instead of barely functioning. It means that what minute amount of the check that is still going to be coming to them can try to keep the stove going. There will be no wiggle room for anything - not shoes or replacing the clothes of a soon to be adolescent boy that is supposed to be hitting a series of growth spurts or cleaning supplies or any chance at affording medicine if something happens to one of the children again.

She understands where they are. She knows why they have not talked about it since that night when the words were first spoken. What is there to say? They both know exactly what they are facing and that all of the words in the world will not change that. She understands the desperate expression that haunts her husband's eyes. She sees the same expression when she catches a glimpse of herself in the shaving glass she gave him as a wedding present (one of the very few things from her childhood home that she had managed to save). She watches with a strange mix of heartbreak and pride the way that Gale is allowing this new responsibility to settle on his shoulders. He is pleased to be able to help, but he also understands far too much about how perilously close to the edge they are. All of them are silent on the topic.

She and Ty never wanted things to go this way. Some families are outwardly nonchalant about the process. They took tessara during their Reaping years after all, and the odds of it not being you are always greater than the odds otherwise. It is common for parents to hustle their children to the Justice Building on their twelfth birthday as if it is an expectation rather than a failure. The Hawthornes will never see it is anything other than a failure on their parts to provide properly for their children. He still looks at her sometimes - exhausted from a shift in the mines and trying to smile reassuringly for Gale - and she can see the question behind his eyes. What else were they supposed to do? She does not have an answer for that - not for what else they could have done. She is positive they would have been burying Rory and has only the barest tendrils of hope that Vick might not have joined him without intervention. They still almost lost Rory as it was.

Nearly two weeks have gone by since they made their no good choice to make decision, and her boys are not yet back to normal, but they are no longer in imminent danger. The danger, instead, has shifted forward. It has become one of battling the winter first for all of them and changing the odds of the Reaping bowl for Gale next. She has eight days left. The numbers remain unyielding.

Being in District Twelve is not conducive to finding alternatives. The District provides a limited number of options for employment. She thought, briefly, of the mines, but she does not know what she would do with Rory and Vick. They are too young for school yet, and they do not have any family that can step in and help. Paying someone to look after them would add another expense, and her paycheck would immediately become subject to the same garnishment as Ty's. It would get them out of debt faster, but it would not be quickly enough to solve the problem at hand. Between the garnishment and the extra expenses her working out would accrue, they might even end up worse off than they are now.

Ty would rather work himself into the ground than see her working in the mines. He used to joke that that was why she had agreed to marry him right out of school, but she has always known that there was a flicker of seriousness behind the words. He has been proud that he managed to keep his family what is actually fairly comfortable by Seam standards. He risks the woods to keep it that way and teaches Gale because he wants their children to have more options than playing by the rules will afford them. If her in the mines would have been feasible, then she knows that he would have swallowed his pride and honored her commitment to their children. She also knows that watching her drudge into the depths would kill him a little inside each day. (That, however, is an irrelevant consideration because knowing that Gale is about to be added to the roster is doing the exact same thing.)

The mines are simply not a practical choice for their present circumstances. They will not stop Gale from registering this year. Nothing she has found in her scribbling and figuring is enough to stop Gale from registering this year.

She had grown up taking tessara in the rough years following the Second Quarter Quell. Her husband had done likewise. They had both been adamant that they would do better by their children. The restrictions on life in the District are looser now. That does not mean that things are easy, but the woods have always helped. Her husband's willingness to risk it has been the buffer that they needed to help them scrape successfully by, but that has all disintegrated with the illness that swept through the District. One event - that was all that it had taken to shatter all of their carefully constructed plans. That was life (and as easy as it was to dwell on the inequities, she recognized that that was true of most everyone's lives). Plans do not always work out - they have to be adjusted. Sometimes, you have to devise a new plan.

That is what she is doing today. There is nothing in her figuring that will stop Gale from registering this year, but there are things that will mean that it will not have to be repeated in the next.

She should be able to rest again at night now that Rory and Vick have responded to the treatment from the doctor, but she can't because she is a different kind of desperate - no longer to keep her children breathing but to find some way of pulling themselves out of this hole they have fallen into before this becomes a cycle that they simply accept.

She has decided that she can take in laundry. She just has to find enough families that are willing to pay to have the chore taken off of their hands. If she is going to do this, then she figures that she might as well start at the top and work her way down. Thus, she finds herself standing at the back door of the Mayor's house taking a deep breath before she reaches out to knock. She can do this (she can also sew if it comes down to that).

It is Saturday, so Gale has been instructed to watch his brothers while she goes to run errands. It is a sign of the level of tension in their home that her boy simply did as she asked without pestering her for the details of this change in routine. She has until this evening to make her rounds. She hopes that she will have an already finished bargain to present to Ty when he arrives home for supper.

She knocks, and she waits (and finds herself wondering if she should knock again as it was perhaps not a loud enough sound to reach the depths of the interior of the space inside). Just as she is about to reach her hand out again, the door swings inward revealing a little girl with a blond ponytail and what can only be described as questioning eyebrows peering up at her.

"May I help you?" The little person in the doorway asks. It is clear that manners have been drilled into this one, and Hazelle almost sighs thinking of all of the times that she is afraid that her lectures on the topic to her boys have gone in one ear and out the other. She offers the girl a small smile - the best that she can manage with the churning that is going on in her stomach (she is determined, but that does not make her immune to being nervous).

"Is your mother home?" She asks.

She knew in a vague sort of a way that the Mayor had a little girl, but she has never been this close to her before. She finds a bit of hope welling up in her that Mrs. Undersee may be sympathetic to a mother looking for work to better care for her children. She is not here looking for charity after all; she is offering a service - one that she is willing to hazard a guess has not been offered before to this particular household. She will not be the first from the Seam to go looking for this type of work, but no one does the laundry from here to the best of her knowledge. Most people tend to avoid doing anything that causes interaction with District officials unless they absolutely have to do so. (There is a sort of stand offishness between those that work more closely with the Capitol and those in the rest of the District, but she could not possibly care less about social divides - unspoken or not - at this point in time.) She knows that the household employs a couple of servants, but it is a big house. Surely taking the laundry off the rest of the helps' hands would be a proposal to which they would at least be willing to listen?

The little girl is biting her lip and glancing over her shoulder, but Hazelle is not certain of the emotion that is playing out on her features. It is then that she notices the state of the child in front of her. The sleeves of her little blouse are rolled up with the faintest hint of drying soap bubbles visible around her elbows. The shirt is wet enough that it is sticking to her front. Hazelle also notices that there is some sort of a white cream that has been rubbed into a series of red blotches visible down both legs below the hem of her knee length skirt. She realizes that she may have seen red rimmed eyes when the door was first opened, but she cannot say for certain because the girl is now keeping her head tilted toward the ground.

"Mother isn't feeling well today," the little girl tells her. The words sound like a learned phrase from someone older and used to making excuses. "Would you like to leave a message for her?"

The determined whistling of a boiling kettle sounding from somewhere behind the child interrupts before Hazelle can decide on a reply.


	2. Find Another Way 2

Disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games_.

Sometimes, he thinks that things always seem to pile on at the worst possible moments because he is being punished for being naively hopeful in his youth. He had not believed that he was single handedly going to change their world or anything inane like that, but he had truly believed that there were things that could be accomplished via small increments and steady applications of logic to the situations at hand that would be able to make things better. He still believed that that was possible; he was just no longer certain that logic was something that the higher levels with which he was dealing used in reference to their decision making.

He takes a deep breath and settles his shoulders against the seat in an attempt to look less tense for the benefit of anyway that may be paying attention. The train ride toward the Capitol is passing painfully slowly. He usually feels as if the miles are being eaten entirely too quickly on the way there - he is usually dreading the meetings that are to come and trying to make decisions about the best possible way to phrase things that will straddle the line between safety and attempts at still pushing the issues that are desperately in need of pushing. Those are not his thoughts on this occasion. He is not planning for the awkward side stepping and dangerous never ending games of bureaucratic finagling that are awaiting him. He is only thinking of how soon he will be able to get home again.

His work is time consuming on any given day, and the trips that are sporadically required do not aide in the endeavor to balance that consumption of time with his responsibilities at home. They do not provide notice for these requests of attendance at any level that would be helpful. It is a part of their paranoia - even when there are no particular reasons to feel insecure, they see no reason to allow the opportunity for engaging in planning. He goes when they summon and counts himself lucky if he has time to tell his family in person that he is leaving. All of the Mayors in the twelve Districts do the same. He honestly does not believe that there has ever been anything to occur at one of these insisted upon meetings that could not be accomplished just as well via long distance communication but that, he knows, is not the point. The point is that even District officials (maybe most especially District officials) are only there to follow orders. It would not do for them to go thinking that they actually have any sort of true power in the capacity of their positions after all.

He is only adding to his anxiousness by thinking about that, but he needs to think of something other than the chaos that he left behind him at home. He can only hope that it has not become more chaos by the time that he returns. The timing is awful, but no one would have cared if he had bothered to mention that. One does not mention personal inconveniences - one knows better than to have personal inconveniences unless they wish to have permanent ones. He should not be angry, but he is having trouble not resenting Brie Worth for the horribleness of her timing.

She has not done an impeccable job in her time as the housekeeper in his home, but she has always shown up when she was supposed to be there. He has always known that someone would be present if his wife needed help. He has always known that Madge would not be coming home to a house where there was no adult available. He has no such assurances for whatever time frame it is before he can return. Madge had assured him that she would take care of everything. "Don't worry, Daddy," she had told him with a soft smile and a pat on his hand. "I'm not little anymore."

His daughter is nine. She may not be little anymore, but she is hardly of an age to be responsible for herself and a house and her mother. It may not be as bad as he suspects, but they have no way of knowing how Mira will react to this new treatment that the doctor has prescribed. She had had a decent run of what she called minor inconvenience days before the headaches had escalated to such an extreme level that she had not moved out of their rooms for eight days when the doctor had offered to make the request.

He still is not sure why the request had been granted. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth to know that if it does work that will be one more thing to be held over his head - requests for shipping of items can be revoked at any time with no explanation or warning. He is suspicious of the granting of the request; he is suspicious of the doctor for making the request. He is suspicious in general, but he can also not watch Mira in that sort of pain any longer and not try anything that might alleviate it.

They had just injected the contents of the first vial into Mira's vein when the two hour notice for his departure by train had arrived. Brie had been waiting in the kitchen with her announcement of her resignation when he got down the stairs. She could not be prevailed upon to stay. She was off to the Justice Building for signing her paperwork with Ed Mitchell from the Tessara Registry (who was forty five if he was a day to Brie's nineteen), and she was not getting married just to keep working in other people's houses - her words. He has fifteen years on his own wife, so he tends not to be overly suspicious of age gaps - that does not stop him from cringing at the thought of all the times he came home to find Ed hanging about his kitchen with some report or other that should have been left for him at work and what may or may not have been going on all those times in his home.

In the end, he had literally had no time to make any other arrangements. Madge was home alone with her mother while she rode out the aftermath of whatever reaction to this new medication she might have. He could only hope that the doctor would actually bother to come by and check up on his wife in a timely fashion, but he was not going to hold his breath. He knew better than to have much in the way of expectations in that direction. It might be that a confluence of best case scenarios would occur while he was gone and he would return to a family and home in better shape than when he had left them, but he no longer believed that best case scenarios were what occurred in Panem.


	3. Find Another Way 3

Disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games_.

The girl steps to the side when she turns in the direction of the whistling kettle. This leaves enough space for an unobstructed view of the room behind her (a room which is obviously the kitchen). Hazelle takes in the details in front of her with one sweep of her eyes around the space. She has never been inside the house. (In truth, she has trouble terming it a home inside her head. Everyone in the District knows that during those times of the year when people from the Capitol come to stay, the place is crawling with them. It makes it difficult to picture it as a place where one of the District's families actually lives; it also provides just one more reason for people to keep their distance.) She is, however, very certain that the kitchen is not supposed to look like this (no one's kitchen is supposed to look like what she is seeing).

There is a stepping stool that is pulled in front of the sink - a sink in which she can barely see dishes through the bubbles that look as if the edges can hardly contain them. There is a mop leaning against the counter with the head in the middle of a puddle of water that is directly in front of the stove. A tea tray is laid out on the little table with what looks to be toast ready to be served in contrast to a teapot with the lid off waiting to be filled and shards of what is likely porcelain scattered on the floor beneath. In short, the room looks like chaos - the sort that she knows can happen so easily when well-meaning but lacking in coordination children are determined to help without supervision. She expects an adult to come scurrying into the room to take charge of the situation at any moment, but no one does.

The girl is sliding the step from in front of the sink toward the stove when she snaps out of her somewhat shocked observation and into action.

"Let me get that for you," she says as she steps into the room (her natural inclination to cringe and berate herself for even considering entering without an invitation being overridden by her inability to watch a child that size try to manage a boiling kettle of water while she stands idly by). She picks up a towel from the counter and uses it to grasp the handle while she tilts her head in the direction of the table with its waiting tray. "In the pot?" She asks.

The little girl nods her head almost automatically but looks as if she is about to start to argue in what Hazelle is sure will prove to be the most polite dismissal she has ever received.

"Thank you," the soft voice tells her with a half-smile that sends Hazelle's mother senses tingling in the someone is about to try to fib to her fashion. "I can get it. I just forgot to use the stool before."

The bits and pieces of the girl and room resolve themselves into a clearer picture for her with those words. The girl is short, the kettle is heavy, and the angle would have been awkward. She has burnt herself and likely backed into the table and knocked off the cup when she tried to get away from the scalding water. She's tried to put something on the burns and was in the midst of cleaning up when Hazelle interrupted her. She must have been doing the dishes while waiting for the kettle the first time.

The how of the start of it makes sense to her; she is at a bit of a loss as to why it is continuing. She cannot figure out why no one apparently responded to the noise that must have been made in the process of it all. She knows that the whole incident could not have occurred in silence. The house is large, but the housekeeper ought to be around somewhere close by (even if a not feeling well mother might be at a distance up the stairs that would have muffled the sounds). Why is there no one else in the kitchen? She understands the value of teaching children to clean up their own messes, but this does not appear to be that. It seems, rather, to be a complete lack of supervision altogether.

She wants to ask questions but knows that it is ultimately none of her business. Also, her taking over the kettle seems to be making the little girl uncomfortable. (She cannot blame her for that. A stranger has just stepped into her house uninvited after all.) It would be best if she goes ahead and explains her reason for being here. If Mrs. Undersee is too ill to speak with her today, then maybe she can plead her case to the housekeeper to start. She does not know the current occupant of the position, so she cannot ask for her by name and hopes that does not make her phrasing of the request sound too awkward.

"Since your mother isn't well," she begins as she returns the kettle to the top of the stove, "could I speak with the housekeeper for a moment?"

The little girl bites her lip again as her eyes shift down so that she is staring at the shattered fragments littering the floor around Hazelle's feet. "Miss Worth won't be back," she says. "She'll be at her new house if you need her."

That gives Hazelle a moment's pause. She had a reason for coming here - an important one. She needs work, but it does not seem as if there is anyone available in the house at the moment to offer it to her. She has a list in her head of other places where she intends to offer laundry services, and she needs to get to them (especially if this is an indication of how her day is going to go). She should get going. She looks down at the floor again and sighs. She cannot walk away - not yet. She will not be able to focus on anything else if she does not at least clear up the broken bits before the girl ends up more injured than she already is.

"Is there a broom?" She asks and raises her hand to ward off the protest that immediately comes to the little girl's lips. (It's starting to bother her to keep referring to her as a little girl in her head, but she has no idea what the child's name might be.) "A broom," she repeats in the no nonsense tone she uses when her boys have picked at each other long enough and need to give it a rest. It does not work in quite the same manner on the child in front of her.

"I told Daddy I could do it," she whispers biting her lip even harder. Hazelle realizes in that moment that the chronic biting of her lip is the method the girl is using to prevent any tears from escaping. She does not want to think about why someone that small has already learned such a method for trying to hide her emotions. She was supposed to be helping to alleviate some of her worries with this excursion to the Mayor's today; she feels like she is failing in that endeavor in more than one way.

"I'm Hazelle Hawthorne," she offers - realizing that she never bothered with an introduction and hoping that it will help to put the child a little more at ease. The child in question blinks at her as her teeth visibly bite down even harder on her lip before something in her posture shifts. Her shoulders straighten up, and she holds out a little hand in a graceful and practiced move.

"Madge Undersee," she states as Hazelle gives a soft squeeze to the small fingers. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Likewise, Madge," she replies wondering how many times the girl has been forced to perform a similar ritual with others that have also invaded her house. She shakes off the alien thought to process later and offers what she hopes will be a reassuring smile. "Let's get this cleaned up, shall we? The quicker we do; the quicker we can get your mother her breakfast."

The response tells her that she guessed the purpose of the tray correctly, and Madge appears with a broom almost before Hazelle realizes that she had moved out of sight. She handles the sweeping while Madge tackles the puddle with the mop. They work in silence. The girl does not seem to be inclined toward being chatty, but she cannot decide whether that is the situation or simply the nature of her personality.

She is feeling better about being able to leave without feeling badly when their cleaning is interrupted by someone else knocking on the door - the front one this time.


	4. Find Another Way 4

Disclaimer: _The Hunger Games_ does not belong to me.

She did not know how to put into words how this new treatment had made her feel - quite frankly words and feelings had both slipped so effectively away from her while she was under that it might be of no use to try. She could liken it to sliding into the blackness of sleep, but sleeping never left her vaguely aware of her surroundings while remaining so detached from what her senses were registering that she simply did not care what she might or might not be processing. It had all seemed very natural while it was happening. In the aftermath, she was confused as to why it had not registered as odd at the time.

She had hoped (back in the days when the "headaches" were fewer and farther between) that there would come a day where she became used to the pain (or tolerant enough of it to pay it less mind). She had told herself that there would come a day where the pounding would be a sort of a background noise that she could push through and function with (perhaps not comfortably but functioning all the same) so that everyone around her was not pulled into the effects of the pain with her. She had longed for that day to come with each and every moment of importance she had missed (and each and every just everyday moment of which she had been cheated). Surely, she had told herself, that it would eventually become familiar enough to be less jarring. She had been wrong.

It never became something that she could push through or move beyond. The headaches became more frequent. They lasted longer. The times in which she could be her in between them started to become negligible. She would never forget the expression on her daughter's face the day she had come home from school and followed the sound to where she had been beating her head against the tile of the bathroom floor in a half-delusional attempt at driving the pain inside of her head out with self-inflicted pain on the outside. She would never get over the sight of her child wiping up the blood that she had not even realized was dripping from where she had split open her forehead from the force she was employing. She had scared Madge. She had frightened Simon. She had terrified herself. She had had no idea what she was doing - only that she had wanted something (anything) to make the pain stop.

She had said yes to the doctor when he made the suggestion. She knew all of the reasons why it was a potentially bad idea. She understood the series of concerns that had been visible in the depths of her husband's eyes. She did not know what else to do. None of them did. She was tired of hurting. She was tired of hurting her family. She was tired of her place as wife and mother being lost in the hazes of pain and nausea that filled up her days and nights and swallowed all else in exhaustion in their wake. She just wanted it to stop. There had to be some way to make it stop. There had to be some way to get her life back to at least some semblance of what it had been when there had at least been breaks in the pain.

This medicine did seem to accomplish smoothing away the pain. Smoothing the way seemed like an appropriate turn of phrase to her (admittedly still somewhat fuzzy) mind. It was like everything around her had melted and the pain was as distant and detached from her as the feel of the bed or the sound of voices or the movement of her own limbs. The pain was gone but so was the time during which she had been drifting in the muffled darkness. She would have to wait and see how long the headaches stayed away in the aftermath. She would have to see how much time she had lost and weigh it against the time gained. She would have to be as logical about it as possible because she knew even in these first moments of coming back to herself that letting further decisions be determined by how she was feeling would be a colossal mistake.

She had liked the melting. She had liked the distance and the detachment from the pain. She had appreciated the muffling of everything. Given the choice in the midst of it all, she knows that she would have chosen to stay. Nothing else had mattered while she had been there. She had not cared. She had been detached from everything, and everything meant everything - the house or the District or the Capitol and herself or Simon or Madge. She had not cared. She would not care again if she was back there. Things like caring would not fit into that place. It did not exist.

The effect of the medicine itself was not what was causing her worry. The knowledge that she would go back in a heartbeat in the midst of one of her pain filled episodes is what left her completely terrified.

The tap at the door of her bedroom summoned her attention, and she blinked her eyes wondering if she was seeing things as she came down from the influence of the substance in her veins. She did not recognize the woman who peered in while holding a tray across her forearms.

"You're awake, Mrs. Undersee," the woman said as Mira tried to sit herself up in the bed and get her bearings. "Madge wasn't sure when you might be up."

"Madge?" Her voice sounded strange in her own ears as if the muffling had not completely subsided.

"She had a bit of a mishap," the unknown woman said gently. "The doctor is just checking her over before he comes up to check on you."

Several thoughts flooded through her at once in response to those words - the caring that had been missing in the muffled dark slamming into her all at once. Her daughter was hurt, there was a stranger in her house, and one last nagging source of anxiety that was trying its best to shove everything else to the back of her mind - just how much time had she lost?


	5. Find Another Way 5

Disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games_.

Hazelle Hawthorne goes home from her expedition having spent far longer at her first stop than she intended but still arriving home earlier than she had dared to hope. The boys are wound (she really expected nothing less from the three of them being left to their own devices, and she tries to process as she settles them back into a more normal routine). She needs her thoughts together before Ty arrives home from the mines so that she can tell him of the offer and be prepared for all of the questions that she knows he will have. They will need to have a lengthy talk after the boys have been sent to bed - she has a job. That fact settles across her thoughts as if it is something other that her brain cannot quite process (which just makes everything stranger because a job is, after all, the reason she went knocking at the Mayor's back door in the first place).

She was at the right place at the right time - had made a series of decisions that had led to an offer. She finds that the hardest part to wrap her head around. She is hardly the first person in the District to be desperate (and she can admit that never yet having watched her children starving means that she is not even the most desperate), but, she supposes, she is the one who came looking. That, it seems, makes all of the difference. She took a chance, and it has paid off - she cannot claim to be completely unfamiliar with such an occurrance. She is married to a man who makes regular trips outside of the official borders of their District on the chance of keeping them better fed and cared for after all.

Gale can tell that they want to talk without an audience and seems to put up more of a fight about going to bed than usual. Hazelle knows that he is without a doubt hovering just on the other side of the door attempting to listen in on them. He knows their conversations of late have revolved around him and tessarae and the struggle to keep them going on the remains of a garnished paycheck. He knows that she did something unusual today even if he does not know what that unusual thing was exactly, and he is both curious and suspicious. She does not think that he will be able to make out much of what they are saying. Ty knows their eldest is hovering as well as she does, and they both keep their voices down as much as they can. Besides, they have been married for a lot of years (with small children under foot who do not always need to be privy to what the adults are saying around for most of those years) - nearly half of their communication on the topic is being conveyed in facial expressions and hand gestures.

Ty has reservations; she has reservations. After all, she is going to be working for a District official in a capacity where there will be contact with Capitolites on a routine basis while her family actively engages in poaching - a crime that carries a penalty of execution if the laws are strictly enforced. It is not the best of combinations. They have a long into the night discussion of any and all potential pitfalls that they can imagine (and the two of them can imagine quite a lot - it has, after all, not been so long since the harsher penalties in the District had been more strictly enforced in the crackdown that had followed the last Quarter Quell). There are dangers, but there are always dangers. The question is one of whether or not the gains are worth chancing the dangers and whether or not the dangers can be mitigated. They talk through it the best that they can with the best of the knowledge and numbers at their disposal.

Their discussion leads to what feels like (to Hazelle at any rate) the inevitable conclusion. The weighing and consideration and looking out for all of the potential downfalls in an attempt to not be blindsided by something that had not been immediately obvious cannot change the fact that there is more to be gained than to be risked by her acceptance. They need this. There will be no tesserae registration when Gale's birthday arrives. What could outweigh that? The discussion had to be had (because that is how she and Ty function), but she thinks they both knew from the first exchange of words that there was only one decision to ultimately be made.

In the end, the job is a chance (much like bringing contraband from the woods back into the District or even going out into those woods in the first place) that they will take while hoping that the odds work out in their favor. It is not just a job. It is not just extra security for their family. It is the difference in Gale's odds in the Reaping. She would be willing to hazard far more in exchange for that.

She is not just hoping herself into seeing something that is not actually there. She has worked the numbers forwards, backwards, and practically upside down to make sure that they can make it work. If she was a single woman, then the salary she will be receiving would keep her comfortable (and not just Seam not starving and can keep the fire mostly going comfortable). As a married woman with three children, it will be tight, but doable. And when Ty's check is no longer being garnished to pay back the doctor, well . . . she will think about the possibilities when they get to that point. She cannot let herself make plans for that far ahead - not when recent events have reminded her again of how easily such plans can shift out from underneath them.

She is still struggling with the fact that everything seems to have worked out too well even after she and Ty have ended their conversation and taken themselves off to bed. It is as though everything that was potentially in her way has been smoothed over before she even asks.

She can even bring Rory and Vick with her so long as she is completing her tasks in a timely manner and they stay out of the way of any visitors that might be in the house. She is not certain what to make of those instructions (she does not want her boys around people from the Capitol in any case, so she supposes that it does not really matter), but Mrs. Undersee (when she had for lack of a better term sobered up some) had seemed strangely pleased by the thought of some little boys potentially being wandering around her house.

Hazelle remembers what it was like being an only child who watched brothers and sisters make their way to and from school together and reckons she might understand the way that the little girl's eyes had sparkled when her mother told her that she would be able to play with the Hawthorne boys when she got home from school until Hazelle was ready to leave in the evenings.

Morning brings a grumbling opposition, but it is not one that will cause her to waver in her decision. Gale gives every indication of being less than pleased upon being informed that he will be responsible for walking to school with the Mayor's daughter in the mornings. Her oldest is a strange mix of relieved (and not wanting to admit that he has a reason to be relieved) and put out that he is not going to get to fill the role of helping for which he had volunteered. He so craves his father treating him as if he can be counted on to separate him from "the kids."

She tries to be understanding of such feelings - he takes his position as the oldest very seriously (and she loves how he loves his little brothers). That does not change the fact that he is still a few days shy of twelve - it would be her preference that he remain one of the kids for a little bit longer. She is making that happen as best as she can which includes her flat out refusal to allow him to stay home when she and the littles leave in the morning to get himself off to school.

Monday finds them at the back door of the largest building in the circle made up of houses that come as part of the compensation for working in a governmental position. Vick is tucked sleepily against her shoulder as Madge opens the door once again. She makes quick introductions and nearly swats her son when he responds to the girl's perfectly well-mannered "It's nice to meet you" with a half-grunted "Pretty dress" that even she isn't sure of the sincerity or sarcasm behind.

It is not the most auspicious of beginnings, but it is a beginning. She is daring to hope for better things to come.


	6. Meddle (Grandparent Intervention)

Disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games_.

Some people like to say that people are only minding their own business. People do not take kindly to other people meddling in their family affairs. I understand the point that they are making. I even agree with them to a certain extent. No one is fond of a busybody. No one wants to feel like they have to defend themselves to their neighbors. We have quite enough of outsiders watching us in the course of our lives; we would prefer not to feel like we are also being looked at by our own. It is a valid premise. I still do not think that is why we tend to be the way we are here in our little closed community. I think it is something else - maybe in addition to rather than instead of the other.

People get used to seeing without seeing. It is a sort of survival skill for life in Twelve. Everyone knows someone who is dying a little quicker than what might be considered natural - Seam or Town does not make as much of a difference as some people would have you believe. We are all in the same District. We all have ultimately limited options if for no other reason than the fact that none of us can leave this place. It may take slightly different forms, but different hardly renders one ideal.

On the Seam side of the District, the causes tend toward malnutrition in the children and accident in the adults. Starvation is a possibility that lingers on the edges of what would be considered polite conversation. On the Town side of the District, heart and blood pressure problems tend to be the most common culprits (starvation as a possibility lingers on the edges of our lives as well even if it is not so immediately visible). If our businesses do not turn a profit, then there is no starting over and building up again. Your family's lives may very well be over by the time you can manage to turn things back around.

I am old enough to remember the winter the snow was so deep that the trains could not make it through for more than three weeks (they came up with new equipment in the aftermath of that because it caused some sort of an energy problem in the Capitol) and the stark reminder we all got that there is not a single mass produced item in this entire District that is edible. I know exactly how long it was before my parents felt comfortable enough to take us off of what my mother called half rations at our table. I know the number of children that ended up piled in a storage shed because the ground was frozen too solid for anyone to have a burial. The lack of supplies most certainly did not care on which side of the District you were living in that winter. The mines just kept going - most of the businesses in Town took months to get themselves back on a normal footing.

That is a lot of stress. It is a lot of pressure, and there are no extra workers to help ease the burden of being responsible for open to close day in and day out with prep work and bookkeeping year after year for all of the life that you lead. It takes a toll in a different way than following direction at a job that you leave behind you when you leave for the day does.

I have treated more strokes in the years since my parents first allowed me to start taking calls than I can remember at the moment (my husband has had a couple of small spells himself in the last few years). Life will always find a wrench to throw in your machinery was a saying of my father's, and I have not seen anything to convince me otherwise. Some people like to think that they are always on the top of the list of those who have it rough, and they can never quite see their way to getting a good glimpse of others' burdens.

It makes it easier to keep people at odds with each other when that sort of thinking is fostered. It is also easy to find excuses to not set out to fix your own problems when you are busy being jealous of other people's blessings. It is awfully easy to twist your perspective when you are determined. I have been guilty of it myself.

Take my friend down at the candy shop for example - she has buried a child that she had to watch die on a screen in the middle of the town square. She lost her husband to an altercation with a Peacekeeper before that same year had come to a close. Those facts do not stop me from feeling twinges of "it's not fair" and "why does she get that" every time I see the little blond ponytail swishing on her granddaughter's head through the window of the shop.

I have never been introduced to my grandchildren. I have, of course, seen them - the dark haired girl holding tightly to the tiny little blonde's hand as they walk quickly towards their home after school or some such. They have never stopped to come inside the shop that by rights ought to be one or the other of their futures. I have never spoken to them about their day or helped them balance on a stool behind the counter while I taught them how to measure or how to grind a paste with a mortar and pestle. I held the older one just once (and it was not even my daughter who brought her to be shown off).

I think I could have been a doting grandparent. There could have been laughter and childish voices singing lightening the hours here. It did not work out that way. "We'll just give it some time," he said in the aftermath of the row between them when he dropped by to explain that the original visit would not be repeated. We gave it time. We gave it too much time. Time gets away from us far too easily - life keeps going, and it has been longer than you realize before you take the time to realize it.

That does not mean that I have not kept an eye out (or that I did not have access to some additional information offered in addition to trades at the back door - where she thought he was picking up the few extra coins is something that I never asked). I have always watched, but I have watched a little more closely in the weeks after the alarms last rang at the mines. The entire District freezes when those sirens sound. It takes days, sometimes, before anyone knows with certainty who or how many are not coming out alive. They always post a list of those who have "died in service to Panem" as if it is some sort of mark of honor for the family to see their loved one's name in print and be handed a cheap metal disk as a memento.

I was not clear in my thoughts when I saw my son-in-law's name included on the posting, but a part of me could not help hoping that need might bring about a reconciliation that time and patience had failed to enact. I did not go to her - I could not be certain that would not have set her off on one of her rants about pushing her that had become all too familiar in her final weeks in our home and caused who knows what nonsense in terms of a response. I suppose I thought it better if we left it on her terms - let the decision belong to her to come to us. I do not know what I pictured exactly - a knock at the back door as dusk settled one evening perhaps with my daughter back in her childhood room at night and working the counter during the day with two little girls filling up the quiet. The younger one would listen to stories while perched on her grandfather's knee, and the elder would tell her grandmother about her day while drinking a glass of milk in the kitchen before going off to make the deliveries after school. It made a very pretty picture (one that agitated me all over again that bruised feelings and hasty words had been the only things keeping parts of that picture from being a reality all along).

What I thought or expected or hoped for does not matter. No such knock ever came. I watched a little closer as two little girls walked a little more slowly with cheeks that seemed to look more sunken with each passing day. Their clothes were clean, but the little details were wrong for someone with as many memories of watching as I had. There were no more braids - just pulled back hair as if little fingers did not know quite what they were doing. No one else was going to say anything. Other eyes missed the signs caught up in their own troubles, and ones that suspected would keep quiet for as long as they could. No one wants to see anyone taken to the Community Home - not if there is any other option to be had.

It was the shoulder slump that pushed me in to motion. Until then, I was willing to believe that things might be hard but still workable despite the utter silence of the gossip mill concerning what the "Everdeen woman" was doing to support herself and her children. The whispers had stories for all of the others - a return to a parent's home, a grief induced miscarriage that had culminated in a woman bleeding to death (and not a single person had the presence of mind to come to us for help in that instance I might add), the start of a laundry business (that I might be sorely tempted to take advantage of as my hands could do without the scalding), and a hasty remarriage to a widower had all been mentioned.

No one seemed to know what my daughter was doing. It was not some sort of misguided tact on the part of the gossipers either. Those women do not do tact - would not know what it was if it jumped up and bit them on the nose. No one seemed to know anything. No one seemed to have seen her outside of her house at all.

I may not have conversed with my daughter in the course of nearly two decades worth of years, but I know how she has always behaved when she has lost something important. I had to physically pull her from her bed when Maysilee Donner's remains came home on the train in a pine box. It took two months of dosing her with teas before she snapped out of it enough to not have to be pushed and persuaded into doing anything at all. She was not an adult then - did not have the same responsibilities. There were not two children depending on her to not shut down. The slump in Katniss's shoulders that afternoon told me everything I needed to know. She had been holding things together, and she was on the verge of giving up. I would give it the night. I had been told repeatedly and vehemently once upon a time that my meddling was unwanted. If the sight of the defeated set to her eldest child's shoulders did not push her into action, then I was going to make the why my business whether my meddling was appreciated or not.

The next day was full of that dreary sort of rain that leaves everything feeling damp and unpleasant. I packed a satchel anyway with a variety of choices (as I did not yet know precisely what I would be dealing with when I arrived at my destination). My husband does not ask questions - he knows exactly where I am going. He squeezes my shoulder as he helps me into my coat - an unspoken communication that says he approves, to take as long as I need, he has the shop under control, and a good luck tacked on for good measure. The trek through the sopping streets is something I most decidedly could have done without, but it does offer an advantage in that people are mostly sticking to the indoors. There is no one standing around to gawk at my progress.

She looks fragile when she peers around the edge of the door in response to my knock. The pause between had been an unnatural one - not the eager anticipation of a child looking for a break in the monotony of a rainy day and not the cautiousness of someone who was hesitating because they were not certain whether or not the door should be answered.

I do not like the way she is clutching the wood as if it is steadying her. The sunkenness that has overtaken her facial features is even more prominent up close and the glazing of her eyes is indicative of someone who has skipped enough meals that focusing is something that requires an effort of will.

"Hello, Primrose," I say as softly as I can manage when all I really want to be doing is yelling at her mother for letting things come to such a state. "I've come to see your mother."

Her heavy lidded gaze blinks slowly in what I surmise to be confusion before she whispers. "Mama's not well."

"Shall we see if I can do something about that?" I ask moving to step towards her. She backs in response opening the door wider as she does. I decide that Ari can wait a few more minutes - Primrose needs me first. If Ari comes rushing out in the meantime to demand to know what it is I think I am doing taking over her kitchen, then all the better. Angry would be of far more use in this instance than withdrawn. The little one (she is so very, very tiny) is hesitant, but her eyes come alive with interest as I start to pull odds and ends from the satchel. I have seen that expression before - the one that says she desperately wants to know what it is that those leaves and powders do. She would like it - healing. I think I can conclude that from just those few moments of not exactly interaction.

It is worse even than I expected - there is not a bit of anything edible to be found (aside from a paltry collection of mint leaves) in any of the cabinets. I start the girl to sipping a concoction that I hope will ease her transition back to eating again. I have run roughshod enough without firing questions about how long it has been since she has eaten at her. I remind myself that as far as she is concerned, I am a stranger who has commandeered her tea kettle. The oldest is nowhere to be seen, but I put aside my worry over that for the moment. Something tells me that starting to give up or not, she would have put up far more of a fight than the little one who is taking small sips of a strange drink that a woman she has likely never noticed before has handed her. Her acquiescence in other circumstances would be rather concerning. Given the situation at hand, I'll just count myself lucky to get as far as I can before I run what will likely be head first into a brick wall of interference.

The less said about my interactions with Ari once I make it back to the darkened bedroom where it looks (and smells) as if she has not moved from the bed in weeks the better. I dose her the best I can manage with her as out of it as she is. She is unresponsive to both my presence and what I say, but she does drink out of the cup when I prop up her shoulders and hold it to her mouth readily enough - which tells me all I need to know about how she has been being kept fed for however long this has been going on (like as not since the medal ceremony). I am sorely tempted to try dumping a bucket of cold water over her head to see if that will snap her out of it, but I restrain myself - it will not do to frighten the children.

"Did Katniss pay you?" Primrose asks in such a quiet voice that I almost miss it.

"What, dear?"

"You're from the shop where the medicine is in Town," she says (so much for her likely having never noticed me before). "Did Katniss pay you to come fix Mama?"

"I haven't seen Katniss today," I hedge. "Where has she gone in all this rain?"

"To sell the baby clothes," she blinks at me looking scared as if she cannot be sure whether she is saying too much or not enough. "Will that bring enough, do you think?"

The question is too old for the little one in front of me, but District Twelve has that effect more often than any of us prefer to think about.

"Don't you worry about that," I say knowing immediately that the words are the wrong ones. How is she supposed to think of anything else? They are on their own for all intents and purposes - these two granddaughters of mine. Worries and money and how to pay are likely all they have known since the day their father did not come home from the mine.

"Because you're my Mama's Mama?" She asks as if she is afraid she is overstepping with the question.

"You know that?" I return with surprise.

"My Daddy," her voice quivers on the word in the manner of the still newly mourning, "said so."

Her eyes are full of questions that I instinctively know she will not voice, but there will be time for all of that later. There will be plenty of time for a lot of things now - because my granddaughters are not going to be staying here.

I don't care what sort of opposition I might encounter when Katniss makes it back. They will be home with their grandfather and me before nightfall tonight.


	7. If Beyond Continued (Katniss)

Disclaimer: _The Hunger Games_ does not belong to me.

Her father had told her once that it was important for people to stop, sometimes, and remember to put things in perspective. It had been an almost throw away comment while they fished by the lake early one morning, but she had filed it away in her head with all of the things that her father had said to her over the years in the woods. Somehow, things that were said in the woods always seemed to have a greater weight to them than the things that were said in the District as if the atmosphere of coal dust and complacency in the face of oppression smothered and squeezed some of the meaning out of everything - even the words.

Complacency in the face of oppression was not a phrase she had picked up from her father. It had been overheard in the conversations of the adults in this District that was not a District out here in the woods where she and Prim had found themselves and adopted into Katniss's interior monologue in those early days when she was still near panicked at every little thing and being angry with their mother had seemed the only way to channel all of her frustrations and fears. Their mother was complacent. Complacent was the enemy. Complacent meant Prim with sunken cheeks and empty eyes taking small sips of mint tea to try to pretend that there was something worthwhile actually in her stomach. Complacent meant watching Prim starve. Katniss hated complacent.

She had not understood about perspective when she was nine and soaking in the early sunlight tucked up by her beloved father and thinking about the fish they would surely be having for supper that evening. She thought she understood about perspective now. It was Prim's birthday today. Birthdays were not something universally celebrated where they had been raised, but their father had always made a point of finding some small something or other to be given to mark the day. Their mother had always contrived to have something they particularly liked for supper - something that Katniss has enough distance (and she likes to think maturity) now to admit had taken some effort on her part to make happen. (You ate what you had and were pleased to have it when you grew up in the Seam.)

She had found herself wishing that she could have given Prim something better than the small piece of fabric that was tucked in to place beside her normal spot at their table. Prim could have used a dozen or more things that Katniss could rattle off without even needing the time to think it through - she had so many things that she wanted to know that Katniss could not teach her. She had always focused with her father on the things in the woods that were for eating. She had brought back the things that were for her mother's remedies only knowing which plants (and which parts of them) she was supposed to be bringing - very seldom had she known which was for what or why or how it was supposed to be prepared. She knew a couple of the obvious teas - beyond that she was at a loss. Prim would have liked to know more. Her little sister wanted to fix things, and she would have done a beautiful job of taking care of the injured and sick (nerves for that sort of thing were not a trait that they shared in common). Katniss regretted that she could not do more to teach her; she felt guilty about it even (because she knows that this was something that their mother had known and understood and Katniss had taken them away from the woman and lost Prim all of that knowledge).

Thus, she found herself taking some time in the course of her morning for putting some things into perspective.

After all, the fact that Prim did not have a teacher did not seem so awful a thing when compared to the fact the Prim was neither buried in the cemetery lot back in Twelve nor being beaten on and still underfed trapped in the Community Home. Here (even with all of the things she would like for Prim that they could not have) still had to be better than that. It had to be.

Here (she had decided long ago and never since changed her mind) was safer.

Katniss had learned early that there was no such thing as safe, but there was such a thing as safer. You had to weigh everything and pay attention to see which was which. Safer, she had ultimately decided, had a lot more to do with what you did and chose over what happened to and around you. It was something that you could do something about. You did not just have to let things happen to you. You needed to know when the odds were against you and how best to turn them when they were. Sometimes (no matter how many things she was doing), she felt like that was the only thing that she ever truly did. She even thought that she might be sort of good at it. (She had, after all, had years and years in which to practice.)

For example, Prim had not been safe back in District 12. Prim was also not safe in the woods. Neither place was actually safe, but the woods filled with plants and animals made for a safer place than the bare cupboards of their childhood home. The potential danger of predators that lurked amongst the trees was safer than the certainty of Peacekeepers, Reapings, and the Community Home. The stranger that offered them direction had been safer than their mother with her empty eyes and vacant expression. It had been choices between these dangers and those. It had been decisions between this threat and that.

That was reality.

None of that made the woods safe. A better choice was just that - better. It meant that the other choice was worse (not that the first choice was good or easy or actually safe).

The woods were a part of nature. If there was one thing that Katniss had always understood about nature, then it was that (despite its beautiful moments and ability to provide) it was determined to eat you. One misstep, one bad choice - that was all it would take for it to swallow you whole. She had made her peace with that without ever letting herself fall into the dreaded complacency trap. Just because it wanted to eat her (eat Prim) did not mean that she had to stand by and let it. She took what she already knew and learned as she went the things she still needed. This way each day ended with nature in their pot simmering over the fire in preparation for going into their bellies and not the other way around. She trusted nature for all its ill-intentions more because she knew how to work around it. She even liked (or maybe respected was a better word) nature in spite of it all. She could not remember ever feeling like she had control back in Twelve. It might be the passage of time or the fact that her memories were all jaded by those last weeks without their father's protection, but her memories of Twelve were all filled with worry and despair and an utter conviction that everything she was trying was failing.

She fails at things here sometimes, but she has never felt like she is failing. Most importantly, she has not failed Prim here.

Prim has the book that their parents created together and her own ingenuity to teach herself, and she has the chance to use it. They have space to make their own way here. They have space to survive (when Twelve had felt like everything closing in to smother them). She likes having space (thinks that maybe she was just never meant to be very good with people).

The settlement is like that as well - as much as it can be considered a settlement. The people like their space from one another. For all that a family with illness never goes unvisited and volunteers to help with the undertaking of larger projects are plentiful, everyone retreats back to their own home place and keeps out of each other's way in between times.

Katniss had not understood the structure at first - still is not sure she gets all of the ins and outs of it. It is enough for her to know that Prim had been fed and checked on when Katniss herself had had rabbit fever.

It is comforting even, but it is not safe. She is as okay with that as she can be.

She doesn't know exactly how staying back in Twelve would have ended. She likes to think that she would have kept Prim from starving (even if that ultimately meant the Community Home), but she knows that even with everything that can and may go wrong, she will never be sorry that she does not have to watch her younger sister stand in the square with her name in the Reaping Bowl.

Prim is 12 years old today.

She is alive.

She was fed today.

She smiled when she walked out the door to do her chores.

This is all of the perspective that Katniss needs.

She is as well as Katniss is capable of making her. There was nothing else that she had wanted; she had gotten more than she had felt possible in her frantic dash out of the District.

She uses that knowledge to fend off the guilt that likes to creep in when . . . will she has never found a rhyme or reason . There are just times when it is there - with questions she has no way to answer.

What had happened to their mother? Had anyone noticed their house going quiet? Had she simply withered away in the bed she had been so determined not to leave?

The thought that she was a bad daughter creeps up on her at times. What would her father (who had adored her mother) have said to see his oldest abandon her?

She tells herself that she should not feel that way. The woman was their mother. She was supposed to be the one who took care of them - not the other way around. Prim had come first. Prim would always come first.

She also thinks about the bread that had inspired her to not give up that day more often than she should. She never thanked the boy - that thought haunts her more than the wondering about her father's opinion or dwelling on her mother. She never thanked the boy (would never have a chance to thank the boy). She would always regret that. He had made her brave enough to save Prim, and he would never know. He might not ever care - but she did. She was sorry for that even while she was not sorry at all that she had taken Prim away from that house that used to be a home and had become nothing other than a place to sit and wait for death to come and take them away.

This is safer.

This is better.

She would decide the same all over again.


	8. If Beyond Continued (Madge)

Disclaimer: _The Hunger Games_ does not belong to me.

Madge Undersee plays piano.

This is a fact. It seems simple enough.

She has learned to ignore the commentary from her peers that become privy to this information. It is a sign, they whisper, of just how much of a snob she is. After all, what kind of person has time to sit down and play a musical instrument when there is work to do and a family to keep fed and warm and wearing clothes that are not completely threadbare. As Madge has time for such a frivolous pursuit, it must be a sign that she does not have any worries or work to do or anything useful with which to occupy her time.

She notes that no one ever seems to make comments in a similar vein in reference to the people from the Seam who play fiddles or tin flute to relax on their front steps after a day in the mines. That, it would seem, is an acceptable use of ones' time. She wonders if there was a piano available somewhere to the general public and someone from the Seam took up the practice in their evenings and Sunday afternoons whether the piano would still be a frivolous pursuit or whether it would prove out that it was just Madge that was the problem.

Okay, so she does not actually wonder. She knows the answer to that. She just likes to pretend sometimes that an entire District full of people does not dislike her for no apparent reason other than the fact that she shares a last name with a government official.

Sixteen year old her is much different than seven and even eleven year old her in that she no longer believes that there is anything she can or cannot do that will change the perception of the people who maintain enough distance to ensure that they never actually know anything real about her. The stories and gossip are better (when people even trouble themselves to pay her enough mind to bother with gossip about her). Sixteen year old her has also learned to accept that silence is her lot in life.

She used to think differently. She used to revel in discussing topics that she wanted to understand (topics that her mother would prefer that she did not understand) with a grandmother who listened and taught and let her say things that were not always safe to be said. Her grandmother has been gone for years now, and she knows the difference between safe to say and not safe to say now. She can censor herself when necessary (and, thus, she does not bother with speaking much at all when she has to be within the walls of her home). Their house, after all, is a glorified hotel whenever the need arises and she has no delusions about the fact that they can never be sure whether someone is listening or not.

It is not a coincidence that she became much more devoted to her piano practice at the same point in her life as when she first realized this truth. Her entire world is quiet (because she cannot speak freely in her home and to whom would she speak to outside of it when no one in her entire world outside of the walls of her home does more than tolerate her - and that is the best case scenario)). The piano does not have to be quiet. The piano does not have to bite its tongue. The piano can say whatever it wants to say whenever it wants to say it. She can pour out every word that she strangles off and every thought that she knows is not allowed and coax it out of the keys until it is something beautiful and dangerous and untouchable all at the same time.

Haymitch catches her in the midst of one of her more vehement pieces once when he wanders in to the sitting room. Who knows why he is there in the middle of an afternoon when her mother is out cold and her father is in his office, but who knows why Haymitch does anything that he does? (Why would anyone ever make himself throw up on people's shoes for his own personal amusement? She knows that he has a persona that he likes them to see when they look at him, but the man is genuinely pleased by the activity. Either boys are even stranger than she already thought that they were or Haymitch has more damage than it first appears.)

"Maybe not so aggressive with those keys," he tells her before making a production of groaning and pushing a hand against his forehead as if keeping something from escaping from between his fingers. "People don't care much for things that give them headaches. Makes them want them to disappear."

She recognizes the warning for what it is. She does not remember a time when she did not find little pieces of advice and not readily available information tucked in to the man's rambling. She launches back into the piece she was just playing and pushes the keys harder while smiling at him over her shoulder. He leaves the room after leveling a glare at her. She is not being antagonistic just to be antagonistic and the man knows that - they had that row between the two of them long enough ago that it is now just established fact.

Haymitch does not get to gripe about other people's rebellions. Just as she does not really complain about his - he has earned his rebellions. She knows enough of the details to know that the details are dangerous, and she knows enough of the danger to keep her balanced from tipping over the edge. To put it succinctly, she has this. She is not being unduly reckless (or anymore reckless than it is just for her to be a Donner descendant in the household of the Mayor). She knows the odds in a way that three quarters of her District can never dream of comprehending, and they will never do anything other than right her off as some sort of a pampered, useless accessory standing in the square for the purpose of modeling an outfit they can never hope to own.

She does her best to not be bitter over that (knows that she is miles and miles away from the little girl who used to come home after being in the presence of Gert Lewis and cry into her pillow to make sure that no one could hear the sound), and she thinks that she is, on most days, a pretty content being who is managing her lot in life the best she knows how. She misses the concept of friends in an abstract sort of a way - feels the tinges of jealousy pinch her from time to time when she watches other people actually speak at their lunch tables or walk home with other people in the afternoons. She has never had friends though - so she cannot miss them in the same way that she would if they were something that she really understood.

What does she know about sharing secrets (other than every day of her life)? What does she know of letting people be dependent on her (other than the care that she takes of her invalid mother)? What does she know of anything that is of any interest to any of the teenagers in her school (except the knowledge of the reality that nothing of their lives is the way that it has always been or has to be)? She is solitary. She is aloof because they choose her to be aloof (maybe even need it of her so that they have something closer to other than the Capital within their reach that they can touch). She is the scapegoat - in the old, old sense of the world. They can place all of their frustrations on her (because she is safe). They can blame her (because she is safe). She is safe (and she does not have it in her to deny them the only outlet that they believe that they have because they are young and ignorant of many things and she has her own habits that do not bear out in the details that are laid out in the sunlight for perusal).

It is the adults that are the ones that she has more difficulty dealing with when they let their whispers reach her ears and their glares catch her eye. They are adults - can they not display enough self-control to wait until after she walks by to have a go at her? They should have learned discretion if they learned nothing else by the time they reach the age to be out of the Reaping.

It's a pity that the people of Twelve (the people of Panem) are so adept at not learning.


	9. If Beyond Continued (Prim)

Disclaimer: _The Hunger Games_ does not belong to me.

There is a lady that taught her how to make cheese from the milk from her goat that likes to say that birthdays and a new year are times to reflect on one's life choices. Since the goat had come to her as a gift from Katniss on her tenth birthday, Prim tends to be reminded of that saying (and a handful of other such things the woman is fond of saying whenever they happen to see her on one of the market days that the families that live scattered throughout the woods around hold to exchange goods and services and what passes for news) whenever she is taking care of the milking (milking gives you time to think like that). It's almost her birthday again, so she is letting herself examine a few things that she tries not to think about too often to the rhythm of the milk hitting the bottom of the pail.

Prim is never sorry that she followed Katniss into the woods on that day when it finally felt like there was some hope to be found again after a long stretch of where it felt like everything in the world was trying to push all of the hope out of them. She is sorry, sometimes, that they did not bring their mother with them when they ran away to the other side of the fence. She cannot help but feel that way even though she knows that their mother would not have come - if they had even managed to get a response on the suggestion out of her at all. There was something wrong with their mother in the weeks after their father no longer came home from the mine at the end of the day. She knows that the behavior that she saw from the woman was not normal - that was not just grieving. That was a sickness - one that her mother had never taught her how to treat. She used to think that was her fault - that if she had been older or bigger or had already learned more then she would have been able to help more. She never told Katniss that - didn't need to as it turned out because she learned to not feel like that anymore somewhere in the course of them coming here and building a little home for the two of them that wasn't so haunted with all the things they couldn't have anymore as their little house back in the District had become.

She knows Katniss is still not ready to talk about what happened back then (may never want to talk about it because Katniss doesn't talk about things like that if she can get around it), so she does not bring it up even on the days when she is desperate to ask some questions or be reminded that she is not alone in her memories). Their mother was sick and there was nothing that she and Katniss could do to fix it - that's all. Katniss could not take care of them and their mother at the same time. Katniss picked them; Katniss picked her.

Prim understands that and has never blamed her sister for it. Katniss was only eleven. It was too much to expect a little girl to keep all three of them going all by herself (it was still too much to expect after the two of them were on the other side of the fence, but her sister had managed anyway). Prim has been eleven for just a day shy of an entire year now. While eleven seemed very grown up to her when she was seven and following her sister into the trees, she now knows that eleven does not come with an intrinsic knowledge of how to do things just by virtue of being eleven. Everything Katniss managed was amazing, but there are some things that not even determination can accomplish.

Their mother was one of those things. She understands now that their mother was beyond caring. She didn't notice her daughters struggling or going hungry or shivering when there was no more coal to warm up the house. Maybe there was something that someone knew that could have helped with that, or maybe there was nothing that would have helped unless their mother decided that she didn't want to be that way any longer. Is it any wonder that Katniss had chosen to take the two of them off of their mother's hands?

She lets herself think about it as the milking comes to an end (after she will return to the cabin and the no talking about the past that reigns within those walls) - wondering what became of their mother.

Maybe she had gotten better without them there to remind her of their father -maybe it had hurt less without them there. Maybe there was time for her to heal better without the living breathing reminder of the loss of her husband invading her space each day. Maybe it had been easier for her without the extra responsibility and worry of two dependent little humans needing things from her of which she was not capable of giving.

Prim tells herself a lot of things (because she has no way of knowing if there mother is okay or if she continued to lay in that bed until she starved herself to death without her youngest daughter there to coax things down her throat). She doesn't know. She may never know - isn't sure she wants to know because she is okay most days with what happened but doesn't know if she will still be if she knows for sure that something worse resulted (isn't sure if she will still be okay if she knows for sure their mother was happier without them either).

She brushes off her skirt, gives the goat a few pats, and lifts the pail so she can exit their little lean to of a shed. The time for reflection is over - at least it is for now.


	10. If Beyond Continued (Mrs Undersee)

Disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games_.

In the grand scheme of things, she is just a placeholder.

This was not supposed to be her burden.

There are a hundred different choices (both on her part and on that of others) that would have made her life an infinitely simpler one than the one her taken paths have led her down. She has never been good at knowing what to choose until the moment has already passed. Still, it is not so much that she regrets as it is that she is so very tired. She doesn't know what it is to be not tired any longer. The drugs do not help with that. The fog and detachment do her no favors in accomplishing all of the tasks she has set for herself, but they are the price for managing the pain (and without management of the pain there are no accomplished tasks).

It is an imprisoning circle that has been closing ever more tightly in on her for the previous decade and a half, and she is, quite frankly, sick to death of trying to fight it. The saddest part is that she has no idea really if those are her thoughts on the subject or it is the melancholia that comes as an after effect of the morphling that is rearing its ugly head. Most days, oblivion sounds like it would be something wonderful to step into with the knowledge that she would never have to step back out, but she knows it doesn't work that way. Most days, there is something that breaks through the cloud - her husband squeezing her hand or her daughter brushing her hair back from her forehead that she uses to ground herself. These little actions onto which she latches help her remember that such things do not affect merely her; it is not only for the sake of strangers that she should keep herself present and tethered and doing the job that has fallen to her to do. Most days, she finds some semblance of balance and manages to muddle her way through (not gracefully by any means but through just the same).

Muddling is, however, much better than those days (fewer and farther between with every passing year) on which her head is strangely clear and her mind manages to go wondering about things it would be best to leave unpondered. She wonders, sometimes, if she might be in better health if she did not know all of the things that she knows. Sometimes, she even wonders if the headaches and debilitation are a blessing after all - because she is sloppy sometimes and cannot always manage the seemingly flawless manner that her mother and (much as it pains her to remember) Maysilee managed to employ. She has never been able to figure out how they did it. She used to lose her patience with her twin back oh so long ago when she had not wanted to have to think about such weighty matters as what always seemed to be lingering in the background of her family (when she had wanted to hold on to a teenage pretense that her parents were ridiculous and it was a betrayal of sorts that her sister was always so willing to go along with them).

They do not watch her as closely as they should if they were following what (as best she can tell) are their standard practices. She knows that they do not - she would have gotten caught a half a dozen times over if she was considered capable of being a threat. The last Quarter Quell still reaches out and stirs up anger in the powers that be to this very day - their memories are long and the Donner family line is the only avenue left for any impulses of destruction to be vented upon (what, after all, could they possibly still do to Haymitch). She knows that they watched her in suspicion for years before the suspicion turned into detached amusement at the misfortune of her illness. She has never been able to determine just how much attention they pay to her only child. Madge will still be Reaping Age when the next Quell rolls around, and she knows how easily such things can be adjusted to serve whatever purposes might arise as the date draws near.

She would have less to clutter her with worry if she believed half the things they say about the cards having been written at the same time as the signing of the Treaty or anything they say about the odds in the Reaping remaining unmanipulated. She may be sickly and weak more days than not, but she is not stupid. She also has too much Donner in her to do anything other than disbelieve on principle everything propagandized by an authoritarian regime. That part is practically genetic. The subterfuge and the activity and the back way challenges are not. They require something else - something that she lacks (something that she cannot even rightly name). This was supposed to be Maysilee's responsibility - not because anyone assigned it that way, but because Maysilee would have chosen it.

She does not believe that she was meant to do this - even if she was not sick and even if she was not on her own. Those things are problems - of course they are. How could they not be? But they are not _the_ problem. _The_ problem is her - just plain old her and the fact that this is not her calling. She cannot do this gracefully. She can barely do this while lacking all sense of grace. She never kids herself about the fact that she is not good at this. Yes, she gets things done, but that is not the same thing, is it?

It never will be - no matter how many years of practice she ends up getting by default. It was never supposed to be her. Sometimes, the paranoid part of her brain (although can one actually be paranoid in Panem where someone is always watching?) wonders if they knew that somehow. Her mind brushes over the possibility that the reason that her sister died in that Arena is because they had somehow figured out what she had been capable of being. Then, she reminds herself that such thoughts are crazy (and she is too close to crazy for trifling). She keeps going the best that she can - without thinking through new or better or old and reworkable methods of improving on what she knows. Maysilee would have adapted and finagled and . . . a lot of things that don't matter because Maysilee isn't here.

There is just her going through the motions out of loyalty to memories. She doesn't have anything else to give. She would need to clear out all of the cobwebs to even start on doing anything other than what she already knows how to do, but the only way to clear the cobwebs is to sleep. The only way to sleep is to dose herself with the meds which leave nothing but cobwebs and confusion in their wake.

She is stuck in so many ways that she isn't sure where one sticking point ends and another begins. Everything is tangled beyond measure. She doesn't see any way for it ever to not be.

After all, this was not supposed to be her burden.

She is just a place holder.


End file.
